Sub-Urban Legend #1:
The Girl Who Walked Home
All Alone in the Dark
©2003 Roger E. Moore
(roger70129@aol.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother
me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: roger70129@aol.com
Synopsis: Jane Lane tells a slightly twisted bedtime story to
the Gupty kids, in the manner of the “Legends of the Mall” tales.
Author’s Notes: This story was another PPMB
“Iron Chef” entry, this time for a contest set up by MMan asking for a new
“Legends of the Mall” tale, this time set in the 1970s.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to MMan for the contest! You da MMAN!
INT:
Interior scene
EXT:
Exterior scene
VO:
Voice over
1.
INT: ONE EVENING AFTER DARK, AT THE GUPTYS’ HOUSE
We
find Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane again babysitting Tad and Tricia Gupty.
It’s bedtime, and the two adorable children have been tucked into their
precious beds, their cute faces and perky smiles visible in the semi-darkness
of a Smiley Face nightlight.
TAD:
A story! You promised a story!
TRICIA:
Good sitters never break their promises!
DARIA:
Good sitters know better than to take jobs at this house.
TAD:
Good sitters have flying umbrellas and handbags that hold everything!
JANE:
Those handbags can hold small children, too. Maybe we should test their load
capacities.
TAD:
Tell us a story that Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t tell us!
DARIA:
I know a good one about President Clinton. Once upon a time in the White House,
there was—
TRICIA:
Oh, I already know that one!
TAD:
They told us about it in school. Gross!
JANE:
Okay, I’ll tell you a story that I heard from the sister of a fellow classmate
of mine. It’s true, too.
DARIA:
Quinn told you this?
JANE:
No, Jodie’s little sister, Rachel. She knows some good stories. This one’s a
little scary, though.
TAD:
I’m not scared of stories!
TRICIA:
Ha! Me, neither!
JANE:
Good. This story is called, “The Girl Who Walked Home All Alone in the Dark.”
A
moment of silence follows.
TRICIA:
I’ve changed my mind. I’m really sleepy!
TAD:
Me, too! I’m going to bed now!
JANE:
[ignores children] Once upon a time, long ago in the nineteen-seventies, there
lived a popular high-school girl who had a boyfriend.
Tricia
pretends to be asleep and makes fake snoring sounds. Tad covers his head with
pillow and shivers.
DARIA:
[eyes children, to Jane] Okay, you can stop. The kids are ready to—
JANE:
[ignores everyone] But this boyfriend was not a very smart boyfriend. . . .
2.
STORY: INT: SOMETIME IN THE LATE 1970S, AT A HIGH-SCHOOL DISCO DANCE
We
see a number of teenagers, dressed in clothing that comes right out of the
movie Saturday Night Fever, dancing under a huge disco mirror ball in a
high-school gymnasium. Prominent among the students is a couple that looks remarkably
like Brittany Taylor and Kevin Thompson. Brittany is in a disco-style pantsuit
with flared bellbottoms and a mood ring on each hand, and her gold hair is in a
frosted Farrah Fawcett style. Kevin wears the white disco suit that you always
think of when you think of Saturday Night Fever, plus black boots and
far too many gold necklaces.
JANE:
[VO] One night, they went to a disco dance at their high school. They boogied
until it got dark, and then they decided it was time to go home. First, of
course, the girl had to visit the girls’ room to freshen up, because she
planned to kiss her boyfriend goodnight for an hour or two on the way home.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend decided to talk to a friend of his on the football
team.
As
Jane speaks, we see Brittany head for the ladies’ room. Kevin walks over to
another student who looks surprisingly like Mack McKenzie. Mack has a gigantic
Afro, one gold neck chain, and a disco suit much like Kevin’s, except that
Mack’s suit is purple with a white shirt and black boots.
KEVIN:
Hey, bro! How’s it’s going?
MACK:
I’m fine, and don’t call me “bro.”
KEVIN:
Sure thing, bro! What’s happening with you tonight?
MACK:
[groans] Oh, my girlfriend’s got to go home and write a paper on Georgia peanut
farming and the Presidency, so I’m going home to watch “Monday Night Football.”
KEVIN:
[startled] Whoa! I forgot all about that, bro! Hey, my parents are out of town.
Come on over to my place and watch it on our set! We can listen to the Bee Gees
on my new eight-track stereo!
MACK:
[looks pained] The Bee Gees?
KEVIN:
I got a new Charlie’s Angels poster, too!
MACK:
[pained] You know, maybe I’d better just go home and—
KEVIN:
And I found my dad’s entire collection of Penthouse magazines!
MACK:
[after a moment of hesitation] Okay.
KEVIN:
Cool, bro!
MACK:
Don’t . . . oh, forget it. Let me talk to my girlfriend a moment, and let’s go.
As
Jane speaks, Kevin and Mack leave the gymnasium together, heading out into the
parking lot—just as Brittany comes out of the ladies’ room, looking around for
Kevin.
JANE:
[VO] When the girl came out to find her boyfriend, she saw no trace of him at
all.
Brittany
walks up to a female student who looks just like Jodie Landon, except with a
gigantic Afro, a brown leather skirt, high black boots, and a black turtleneck.
She wears huge gold hoop earrings and gold bracelets.
BRITTANY:
Have you seen my boyfriend? He was supposed to drive me home so I could give
him a goodnight kiss!
JODIE:
He has to drive you home so you can kiss him?
BRITTANY:
See, I had a really special goodnight kiss that I wanted to try out on—
JODIE:
[holds up a hand] Stop! I have enough information now. I’m sorry, but your
boyfriend just went off with my boyfriend to go watch “Monday Night Football.”
Don’t you have another ride home?
BRITTANY:
[getting steamed fast] Ooooo, so Howard Cosell can give him a better goodnight
than I can, huh? Well, we’ll see about that! [stamps out of the gym]
JODIE:
[calls after Brittany] Hey! Don’t you want me to drive you home? It’s the
seventies, we can do that now!
JANE:
[VO] But the girl was too angry to want to be around anyone else right then.
She was determined to walk home by herself. But it was very dark out now, and
the road that led to her home from the high school was unlit, and it passed
through a deep, dark, haunted forest.
3.
STORY: EXT: A SHORT WHILE LATER AT NIGHT, ALONG A ROAD IN A DEEP, DARK, HAUNTED
FOREST
Brittany
walks alone along a deserted two-lane road. She mumbles to herself as she goes,
oblivious to her frightening surroundings. Strange shapes move through the
trees on either side of the road, with red eyes appearing here and there to
follow her progress.
BRITTANY:
[angrily, to self] I even gave him one of my mood rings so we could kiss every
time it turned green, but did he thank me? No! And I wore those pink hot pants
for his birthday and I got him six glasses of Cola Blast, with two ice cubes
each, but did he appreciate me for that? No! And when he had an owie after that
game with Loserville, and I pretended I was a M.A.S.H. nurse to make it all
better, did he—
Suddenly,
a man wearing a white hockey mask and holding a butcher knife jumps out from
behind a tree. As Michael Myers of Halloween strikes down at her with
the knife, she snags his right arm with one hand, turns, and throws him flying
over her head to land flat on his back with a loud WHUMP! He lies
stretched out on the highway, with Brittany still gripping his right arm by the
wrist.
MICHAEL
MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] OOOOOWWW!!!!! Brittany, what did you do that
for?
BRITTANY:
[enraged] You big bully! You men are all alike!
She
stamps down on Michael Myers’s chest, then kneels over him and twists his arm
in a direction that nature did not intend it should go. The butcher knife flies
out of Myers’s hand and bounces around on the road like the rubber knife it
really is.
MICHAEL
MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Brittany! It’s me, Jeffy!
AAAAAAA!!!! I’m in a costume! This is just a bedtime story!
Don’t—AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
BRITTANY:
[enraged] How dare you try to frighten a high-school cheerleader who’s
been stood up on a date!
MICHAEL
MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] Help! Joey! Jamie! Tell Quinn I love her!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
At
this point, two more figures rush out of the bushes by the roadside. One is
Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street. The other is Leatherface from The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both appear stunned at this turn of events.
FREDDY:
[actually Joey in costume] Brittany! Stop! That’s not in the script!
Brittany,
crouched over the much-abused Michael Myers, turns in Freddy’s direction and
bares her teeth, jaw down, eyes staring and wide. She hisses like a feral
jaguar.
LEATHERFACE:
[actually Jamie in costume, drops his chainsaw] Oh, shi—
Freddy
and Leatherface turn and flee in panic. Brittany leaps from the prone Myers,
does a handspring, bounds on her feet into the air and crosses thirty feet of
space to kick both Freddy and Leatherface in the back and knock them sprawling,
with her on top of them.
FREDDY:
[prone] Help! Police!
LEATHERFACE:
[prone] Quinn!
FREDDY:
[prone] Save me, Quinn, not him!
LEATHERFACE:
[prone] No, me!
BRITTANY:
[hissing in fury] Just wait till I get that scumbag boyfriend of mine! I’m
going to—
FREDDY
AND LEATHERFACE: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!
We
mercifully cut away to see yet another monster, the Wolfman, jump out from
behind a distant telephone pole and run away at full speed.
WOLFMAN:
[Upchuck in costume, panicked] Feisty psycho girlfriend! Feisty psycho
girlfriend!
JANE:
[VO] As she walked through that deep, dark, haunted forest, she had only one
ambition, one goal that burned in her fevered brain.
BRITTANY:
[kicking Frankenstein’s Monster in the head repeatedly while talking] Ooooo,
when I find that boyfriend of mine, I’m going to make him sorry that he wished
he was ever born!
FRANKENSTEIN’S
MONSTER: [actually Mr. DeMartino, trying to fend off Brittany without success]
Ow! Ow! Not the NOSE! Ow! [falls into a bush out of sight, VO] Ow! Damn briars.
But it could be WORSE. At least I’m not KEVIN. Heh heh heh heh heh. . . .
4.
STORY: INT: A SHORT WHILE LATER, IN A 1970S LIVING ROOM
We
are in a 1970s-style living room with orange and brown furniture with silver
trim. A color TV on a bookshelf shows ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” while an
eight-track stereo system plays various Bee Gees songs. Kevin and Mack sit on a
couch, looking through a huge pile of Penthouse magazines, eating
popcorn and drinking Cola Blast.
HOWARD
COSELL: [on TV] We’re back, and this is Howard Cosell. The two teams playing
before us tonight are a disgrace to the name of football. How anyone dared let
these absolutely abominable players into this stadium under the pretense of
participating in an allegedly serious sports event is an incomprehensible
mystery that challenges the very foundations of logic and reason. I ask you,
the audience, have you ever seen anything that defies the imagination as
stupendously as the pathetic, unmitigated disaster that we are witnessing
before us here tonight?
KEVIN:
[holding up a magazine centerfold to Mack] She defies the imagination,
doncha think?
MACK:
[glances at picture, shakes head] I don’t know where they find the women to do
this.
KEVIN:
Not our high school. [finds a picture that looks remarkably—no, perfectly—like
Brittany] Hey! She looks kinda familiar! [frowns] I know I’ve seen her
somewhere before!
MACK:
[not looking at picture, flips through his own magazine] Yeah, sure, right.
DIFFERENT
ANNOUNCER: [on TV] We interrupt this program to bring you a special news
bulletin! We take you live to Long Dark Road, where our television action team
is standing by!
Both
Kevin and Mack look up at the TV with interest. A female news reporter (who
looks amazingly like Ms. Barch, the Lawndale science teacher) is on the screen
in floodlights, with flashing police lights behind her in the darkness.
REPORTER:
[on TV] I’m here on Long Dark Road, where police have set up a roadblock to
stop a crazed monster from reaching the city limits! Wait—
Ms.
Barch turns and looks in the darkness down the road. A nearby row of
high-tension power-line towers suddenly explodes and falls over. Police shout
at each other, and gunshots can be heard.
VARIOUS
POLICE: [on TV] Pull back! Pull back! She’s coming through the roadblock! Get
everyone out of here! Nothing can stop her!
REPORTER:
[on TV, smirking] It’s a she, eh? Sounds like a cheerleader who’s been
stood up on a date! Boy, I know how that feels! Men! They’re all alike! You
think they’ll remember your name in the morning, but nooo—
VARIOUS
POLICE: [on TV] Here she comes! Run for it! Evacuate this area! Abandon your
cars! Call the mayor! Get the governor! Red alert!
The
camera suddenly focuses in on a single female figure stomping along the road,
silhouetted by police floodlights. The figure is clearly a furious Brittany.
REPORTER:
[on TV, VO] Go get ‘em, honey! Go get ‘em! Yaaaa-hoooo!
The
TV picture suddenly is filled with static. Both Kevin and Mack stare at the
screen in shock.
MACK:
Uh-oh.
KEVIN:
Hey, bro! Did you see that?
MACK:
Yeah, and stop calling me “bro.”
KEVIN:
That was the same girl that’s in this month’s Penthouse! Look! [holds up
magazine]
MACK:
That was your girlfriend, man! Did you forget and leave her back at the school
gymnasium?
KEVIN: What? Did I . . . [face changes, suddenly seems to remember something] . . . Oh. [weak laugh] Ha, ha! You know, bro, I think maybe I did.
MACK:
[panicked] Man, I am hauling my ass out of here! [jumps up, runs for
sliding glass door in living room, opens it, then runs out into the
darkness—and screams, VO] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Not me! Not me! He’s in there!
Please don’t—AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
KEVIN:
[startled, looks at open glass door] Whoa! That’s letting in a draft!
Kevin
gets up to close the sliding glass door. As he does, he looks out into the
backyard and sees someone approaching. He blinks, startled, and his mouth falls
open.
KEVIN:
[waves weakly] Uh . . . hey, babe! Did you forget to give me my goodnight kiss?
Kevin’s
face is suddenly filled with unspeakable horror.
KEVIN:
Oh, no! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—
5.
INT: AFTER THE STORY, BACK IN THE GUPTY CHILDREN’S BEDROOM
The
children are not visible, buried deeply under their covers. Daria stares at
Jane with one eyebrow raised.
JANE:
And that’s the story of the girl who walked home all alone in the dark.
Both
Gupty children reappear from under their covers. They are smiling and look
excited.
TAD:
That was cool!
TRICIA:
Tell it to us again! But in slow motion!
DARIA:
Slow motion?
TRICIA:
When she tears her stupid boyfriend in half! Tell that part in slow motion!
JANE:
Nah, it’s time for bed. Maybe another night.
TAD
AND TRICIA: [disappointed] Awww!
DARIA:
Go to sleep now, and the next time we come over, we’ll tell you about the
teenage artist who starved to death because no one would hire her as a
babysitter anymore, and she was forced to eat her paint and canvases before she
croaked.
TRICIA:
Neat!
TAD:
Excellent!
JANE:
[to Daria, mild glare] Were you planning to tell that one, by any
chance?
Original:
5/18/03
Comedy,
script
FINIS